In recent decades, storage has evolved tremendously, and nowadays the need for more storage capacity due to the exponential growth in data, the complexity of having too many incompatible devices, and the pain of managing storage silos don’t leave businesses any other option than figuring out a way to simplify and make sense of it all.
After talking to many businesses and IT professionals, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are four very common challenges with data infrastructure out there. The good news is that software-defined storage can be the super-hero saving the day for you.
Challenge: Applications run slow, impacting operations
A lot of businesses are having challenges with application performance. Their applications are running slow and they can’t achieve the levels of performance they need. That’s what I hear. And the first thing on their minds to address this problem is to buy flash storage, but soon they realize that flash is not a universal cure.
Published surveys state that 70% of businesses have experienced poor performance with their most important applications1 and lot of them have experienced I/O problems after server virtualization – so why, you might ask? Well, a part of the reason is because the performance of the compute layer has been growing at 26% per year, while storage performance has been growing at only about 2% a year. The gap keeps getting bigger.
Tip #1: Improve your Application Performance
Get rid of I/O bottlenecks. Our software-defined storage solution includes Parallel I/O technology and high-speed caching algorithms that accelerate I/O and boost application performance by taking advantage of electronic memory and the multi-core processors already available in your servers to process I/O requests in parallel in a much faster way. If you need to build a high-performance infrastructure for your mission-critical applications, we can help.
Challenge: Downtime is expensive
Businesses suffer from unplanned downtime and it’s a major issue. Nearly one in five companies have had storage failures that caused downtime, outages due to human error, or facility problems, and the scary part is that these can happen at any time. IDC reports that 80% of small businesses have experienced downtime at some point in the past, with costs ranging from $82,200 to $256,000 for a single event.2 That’s up to $427 per minute. Now imagine if you are a large enterprise. It could cost you millions. That’s why having a business continuity and disaster recovery plan is non negotiable.
Tip #2: Improve the Availability of your Applications and Data
Now what business wouldn’t like to reduce storage-related downtime? Our software-defined storage solution provides zero touch failover and failback capabilities to avoid any interruptions in data access and business operations. The best part is that this process is completely automated – no scripts and no manual intervention is required. This allows you to do any upgrades, migrations, or any type of live maintenance during regular business hours and not on the weekends. And if that day comes where an unplanned interruption event hits, our solution can help you provide the business continuity you need for your mission-critical applications.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of ‘4 Must-follow Tips to Save the Day with Software-Defined Storage’ or download a trial today!
Sources:
1. Taneja Group
2. IDC
